With Puff, Stumptown founder Duane Sorenson returns to coffee world he helped create

"Where you're sitting right now, that very seat, that's where Don pulled out a roll of $20s."

Pint of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in hand, Duane Sorenson is recounting the moment, nearly two decades ago, when legendary Horse Brass publican Don Younger handed him a wad of cash, allowing Sorenson to buy his first espresso machine and effectively kick-starting the third-wave coffee movement in America.

Now, less than two years after selling his pioneering Stumptown Coffee Roasters and opening a string of Southeast Portland restaurants, Sorenson is poised to return to a crowded landscape of boutique roasters and sleek cafes he helped create. Later this year, the Puyallup, Washington, native will launch Puff, an independent coffee company with a roasting facility mere steps from the original Stumptown location on Southeast Division Street.

"Over the past year, all my energies have gone into building a coffee company and raising my babies," Sorenson says. "I can't wait to go to sleep tonight, to wake up in the morning to make people coffee."

That morning will have to wait until November, when Sorenson hopes to turn the lights on at the roastery currently under-construction behind his restaurant, The Woodsman Tavern, just around the corner from the original Stumptown cafe and roaster.

Speaking Tuesday, Sorenson was champing at the bit to get back to his first passion, coffee. He talked about the possibilities of holding all-ages shows and dance parties at the cafe, like he once did with Portland pop-punk band The Thermals, and showed off hand-drawn branding from friend and noted Kanye West collaborator Wes Lang.

In the late 1990s, fresh off stints roasting coffee in Seattle and San Diego, Sorenson landed in Portland and looking to open a company of his own, Sorenson took a job working for beer shop Belmont Station at its original Belmont Street location, then used his paychecks to build Stumptown's original Southeast Division Street location.

From those humble headquarters, Stumptown went on to open cafes throughout Southeast and downtown Portland, then on to Seattle and New York City. In 2011, Stumptown took a major investment from TSG Consumer Partners, helping the company push further into pre-packaged cold brew and open more cafes and roasting facilities in Los Angeles and New Orleans. In 2015, Peet's Coffee parent JAB Holding Company bought Stumptown outright.

Soon after the TSG investment, Sorenson turned his attention to restaurants, opening fried chicken and bourbon joint The Woodsman Tavern, glossy Italian restaurant Ava Gene's and Roman-style pizzeria and bakery Roman Candle in rapid succession, all within a dozen blocks of each other. Last year, Sorenson sold Ava Gene's to a restaurant group partly owned by chef Joshua McFadden.

On Tuesday, Sorenson described Puff as an entryway back into the coffee world, which he has missed in part due to a non-compete clause signed during Stumptown's 2015 sale. According to Sorenson, both Stumptown and Peet's have given them his blessing on the new project.

"I miss roasting coffee," Sorenson says. "I want to roast coffee. I miss turning on the coffee roasters and smelling the coffee all day long and working directly with the farms, and I pushed and pushed and went nuts with Stumptown."

He didn't rule out the possibility that Puff would grow to multiple locations over time, saying he remained "very competitive." And he reminisced about the early 2010s, when he traveled to New York to open a pair of Stumptown cafes in Manhattan.

"Writers from the New York Times, Mario Batali in his orange ding dings, the harshest critics were trying Stumptown Coffee, and walking into the Stumptown Coffee bar at the Ace Hotel and saying 'Holy ****.' People were freaking out. Obviously I was proud of it, and obviously I was proud of bringing out a bunch of baristas from Portland, Oregon. We had an opportunity to live in New York City and make coffee and wave the Portland flag. And the harshest critics could not bash us at all.

"The two Stumptown coffee bars in New York City are probably the most beautiful coffee bars on the planet. Portland should pat themselves on the back.